The Fifth Dimension

Last week Bernie and I went to see Interstellar in IMAX. Great trip! Especially after watching live the landing of the European Space Agency's Philae on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko now circling the sun.

Interstellar is both an action thriller and a science fiction head trip raising questions without settling them on the primacy of individual, family, or species, on the vulnerability of Earth and the desolation of worlds without life, on the meaning of time, on self-sacrifice, on loneliness, on the origins and constitution of the universe. And who are the "They" out there? Or are They We?  But the biggest question: is there a fifth dimension in addition to space and time called "love" related to our capacity for empathy?

The movie recalled something I wrote many years ago when exploring the notion of God in our post-modern culture.

______

God is Love. When we love, God is in us and we are in God. 1John, 4,16.

That's pretty simple and very profound stuff. What John is saying to me is that to be with God, in God, for God, no particular beliefs are necessary. No laws. No rules. No morality. Just love. We don't even need a belief in God.

Love means a relationship to at least one other and a very special relationship at that. A loving relationship, a sort of identity with the other, not as other, but as self. Not a thee or an it, but a thou. Not an object of negotiations or affections or thought or sexuality, but an originator of negotiations, affections, thinking, sexuality.

When I have this kind of relationship with another, we are entwined in a creative act because you are treating me and I am treating you, not as an object, but as another you, a person. When I am in a loving relationship with you, as a friend, a neighbor, or even an opponent, I am treating you with dignity, as a person, as an initiator of your own experience and your world and as a co-creator of our experience and our world.

The more persons and creatures we include in this kind of relationship, the more God is in us and we are in God.

No matter what we are focusing on, plans for a house or the city, a business deal, political events and choices, education of our children, financial planning, the latest discoveries of science, a good movie, our hopes and beliefs--we have a background experience of ourselves in relation as co-directors, co-creators, co-subjects, self-actualizing persons (Mazlow), Thous (Buber). That background experience is the frame and context for our words, statements, drawings, plans, and accounts.

The focus-object, articulated in words and formulas, is contained in the four dimensions of space-time. The background experience of relationality is the 5^th dimension. It is "behind" the categories of space and time. It is the presence to the other as subject, unmediated by words. It is the unspoken, hidden, unobserved, uncategorized relation to yous.

The 5^th dimension is love, connectivity, and the relational aspect of all things in space and time. Is "God" the name we traditionally called that background experience, the 5^th dimension to space-time, the connection of all beings? Or is there a Being outside and separate to which that experience points, the Singularity, the Source, the Culmination, the Ground of connectivity, relationality, inter-personality? Is there a Transcendent even to transcendence, the non-objective presence and interaction of persons in relation?

I suppose we could posit a Separate Being out there distinct from the relationality of beings, a sort of Generator for the energy, rather than the relationality or energy of interaction itself. But I am not sure why that is necessary or even what that would mean.

I would rather affirm the 5^th dimension, the relational, unspoken, pre-thematic dimension of what is spoken and objectified. The love dimension. The dimension of syntropy that balances-in-tension the entropic force of material things. This dimension is what we call spirit, consciousness, presence, interpersonal co-subjectivity, transcendence, no-thing. It is the dimension out of which all things appear in space and time. It is the dimension through which all our words and formulas and laws and propositions and beliefs and expressions make sense.

The ground experience on which figures appear has been called in French "conscience". Conscience means in English both "Consciousness," a kind of intuitive or direct, unmediated cognitive experience, and "Conscience", a kind of intuitive or direct, unmediated moral experience.

When I am acting I perceive a certain inter-subjective space that grounds our objective world (consciousness). When I am acting I experience also a direction or an intentionality of my action with and to others (conscience). Conscience is inter-action with others as co-actors. Conscience is interaction present to itself (knowing itself). Conscience is intentionality present to itself (appreciating itself).

Conscience is the foundation of objective knowledge--con-science. Conscience is the foundation of action with others in the world, conscience. It is the "inner, quiet voice" or "silent companion" that accompanies all our actions in society and in the world. It is the sense of being related to all in all, the sense of being present to every space-time, the sense of the eternal and the absolute in this fleeting instant. It is the sense of Love.

Love is the 5^th dimension, the connectivity, the relational aspect of all objects, the source of all things, humanity and the universe transcending. Love perdures throughout space and time


That's it. Simple. I am using too many words. Be silent. Experience. Let be. Listen to the synergy surrounding us. See the luminous fibers conjoining us and all that is.

________

Interstellar, like Star Wars, is offering a new creation narrative for our post-modern, new-science culture. Neither of these would be called a religious film because they are not proselytizing any existing religion. Yet they are raising the question of the religious in our, what some would call, "post-religious" society. They point at the transcendence in our existence and offer hope.

All Religion is Politics

I've been looking at Karen Armstrong's book, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, which I intend to read and maybe use to lead a discussion on the role of religion and politics by whatever means.*

Armstrong's book prompts many of the ethical questions I have been dealing with in this blog, e.g.:

1. Is war itself religious? She cites Chris Hedges whose book I read and found very insightful on the religious character of war.
2. The understanding of religion in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. She discusses the three brains. But I also think of Paul Bloom’s “Is God an Accident?” and “Descartes Baby.”
3. Religion and the stages of human organization: hunter-gatherer, agrarian, industrial, digital. She deals with the pre and post modern concepts of religion. What do we mean by religion as we discuss politics and war?
4. Religion in the West—in US: Founding, Great Awakening, Manifest Destiny, Civil Religion. What are the doctrines, rituals, narratives of the present American religion and its relation to violence?
5. Notion of violence itself. We realize that violence is often necessary. Is violence justified, ever? Then legitimated and sacralized?
6. Use of religion for war; against war; in war. Pacification vs. Peacemaking?
7. Religion and ethics. Can we have an ethics without god, revelation—a natural ethics, a natural religion? Is all politics moral?
8. Separation of church and state, inseparability of religion and politics? Political theology for conservatives, for progressives.
9. Religion in culture. Is there an inevitable war between civilizations? How might we think about the Islamic State?
10. The meaning of power in religion and in politics. It's relation to and distinction from force and violence. Power creation as an alternative to violence. War as the death of politics.

__________
*Clausewitz gave a dialectical definition of war as "the continuation of policy by other means."

All Politics is Moral

In a reflection on the loss by Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections, George Lakoff remakes his excellent distinction between progressive and conservative moralities which ground diverse political languages, interpretations, and policies. I think his only mistake is to suggest an identity between progressive and the Democratic Party and between conservative and the Republican Party. I, on the other hand, see that not all D's are progressive and some R's still are.

Progressive morality considers freedom as a public good that has a higher priority and is a condition for liberty as an individual good. Conservative morality does not recognize the existence of a public good (as did Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) or considers the common good or freedom as merely the sum of individuals at liberty to pursue private interests. See Lakoff's discussion of morality and politics here.

I often tell my Cousin Vinnie that his interpretation of the "facts," his view of history, his proposals for action are completely shaped by his values, his system of morality. As are mine. He doesn't acknowledge the role that values are playing in our views of reality and our hopes for the future. He calls me and others who consider themselves progressives as stupid or even evil. But the evil I see is precisely the subordination or identification of the public good to private interests. And the stupidity is in not recognizing the difference.

I do see the Democratic Party as the best vehicle today for my libertarian cultural, socialist economic, and republican political objectives. (Notice please small "l"  "s" and "r" as I have defined them elsewhere and constitutes my definition of "progressive.") But that was not, nor will it necessarily be the case. I have voted for many a progressive Republican and hope I would have been a Republican when Lincoln was chosen president. I have fought against many a reactionary Democrat in the North and the South. I remember that it was a fairly progressive Democrat who widened the Vietnam War, which I consider one the greatest tragedies of my time, and against whom we had to vigorously organize. And in community organizing in Chicago, it was often Mayor Daley and his machine which we had to confront.

I hope that my fellow progressives will not be discouraged, will not become cynical and negative, will not become purist victims of some evil conspiracy, but will continue to act locally and nationally for progressive principles. Surprise! President Obama has clay feet and he never said otherwise. His message of hope in community was and still is right on the mark even though the reactionary rebels from the Southern confederacy have resurged in concert with large private interests of the North. And at bottom there are different warring moralities.

To quote Lakoff: Progressives and conservatives have very different understandings of democracy. For progressives, empathy is at the center of the very idea of democracy. Democracy is a governing system in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and work through their government to provide public resources for all. In short, in a democracy, the private depends on the public. . . .
Conservatives, on the other hand, have a very different view of democracy. For them democracy is supposed to provide them with the liberty to do what they want, without being responsible for others and without others being responsible for them. For them, there is only personal responsibility, not social responsibility. Indeed, providing public resources is, to a conservative, immoral, taking away personal responsibility, making people dependent, lazy, unable to take care of themselves. Removing public resources is seen as providing incentives, and individual liberty is seen as the condition in which you can carry out your incentives.

There is an international competition that has been going on for centuries, even millennia. It is not between sport teams (e.g. the Tories and Whigs, the Republicans and Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists) in which we take sides, place bets, and win and lose in various seasons. It is much more important than that. The question is whether our evolved capacity to empathy and see the other as ourselves can overcome our natural capacity to conquer the other whom we fear--the other clan, the other nation, the other race, the other religion.

Who will win that competition? It's a toss up and will be determined by our collective choice as to who we want to be. We together will choose not only through our political parties, but through our communities, churches, schools, and businesses and in our own personal approach to each other.

That's the morality in politics. We can look at it as a critical danger to be feared by our species in the light of global warming, corporate control, wealth disparity, oppression of women, Islamic statists, and military occupations. I prefer to see it, even in the past election, as a great opportunity to declare who we are and go for our common progressive future.

Four Faces of Evil (continued)

In the last blog, I identified four evils. I use them as "ideal types" to help explain, but not totally exhaust particular characters. The particular may range between, among, or beyond these types and are better described in narratives and other art forms.

The types help me understand a bit more the undermining of a democratic government in Guatemala by the United Fruit Company and its US agents. They help me understand why Iran is attempting to become a nuclear power. They help me understand why the US is distrusted and hated by many throughout the world. And they help me think about ethics in politics.

To identify a behavior or a character or an organization as evil is of course a judgment--an affirmation applying evidence using criteria (principles or standards) that distinguish what should be done from what should not. Where those criteria come from and what they are is the work of ethics. Some say they are self-evident by the general population and discoverable in their morality. Some say they are revealed by God by prophets and holy scripture. Some say they are to be found in nature through the understanding of the human animal in science and philosophy. Some say they are negotiated by persons in community--local, national, global--and articulated in laws.

And so we collectively develop and adopt codes of ethics to guide the behavior of nations, organizations, and professions. We argue to these codes based on an understanding of human nature informed by science including biology, psychology, and anthropology. In this effort we glean data from diverse cultures including our religions and moralities. And we appreciate the role of conscience, the awareness that accompanies a person's behavior.

What is common about the four types of evils I identified? Is there a definition of evil that underlies all of them? I think so and, not surprisingly, it comes from my ethics of integrity.

My own ethical theory is based on an analysis of human existence as a tension between being and non-being (to be or not to be is the tension) with many dimensions: four of which I propose are 1) the tension between inner subjectivity and outer objectivity, 2) the tension between individuality of self-personhood and the communality of society, 3) the tension between past and future, and 4) the tension between real and ideal. In the dynamic tension of existence arises the moral imperative, an awareness that accompanies (con-science) every conscious human act of the holding in tension across (trans) inner and outer, self and other, past and future, real and ideal.

Evil is the collapse of that tension in which inner awareness and exterior perception are destroyed by the refusal to think about what we are doing.

Evil is the collapse of the tension across individual personhood and the personhood of others by identifying the social and its good with our selves.

Evil is the collapse of the tension between past and future by denying history and its influences and being careless towards the future and the consequences of what we are doing now.

Evil is the collapse of the tension between the real and ideal by denying or acting as if there is no ambiguity and that we are absolutely right because our concept of reality is the ideal.

Evil finally is the denial of conscience and the refusal of transcendence in the flight from existence between being and non-being.

In each of the four types of evil that I identified (banal, pure, trivial, sincere) I discover a collapse of the tension of existence in one or more of its dimensions. Can you?

Four Faces of Evil

I always thought that Hannah Arendt's treatment of the "banality of evil" in Eichmann in Jerusalem was insightful. But now reading The Brothers for a class on John Foster and Allen Dulles, I realize the insufficiency of treating evil as banality. I suggest three other kinds of evil in human behavior.

Arendt's insight into Eichmann during his trial was that he was unthinking in his bureaucratic function for the Nazis in organizing the death camps for the Jews. If, in considering the Nazi phenomenon, she had written on the Führer Hitler himself and his key henchmen, I am sure she would have described them as the shapers of the policy much differently. And I think Hitler's Secretary Bormann represents an evil apart from both Hitler and Eichmann. And Field Marshall Rommel is completely separate.

1. The Banality of Evil is for the 95% of us who go along without noting the consequences for others or really caring about them. We just want to earn our living. It is to our interest to follow orders. We accept what we are told by the media and pass along our opinions without questioning them. We live the unexamined life. We accept the official version of history with its stereotypes and categories. We are patriotic. We behave and accept the prevailing morality that separates the good guys (us) from the bad guys (others) no matter what it is.

2. The Purity of Evil is practiced by the shapers and architects--those who have moved themselves into a position of uncontaminated power. They create, know, and promote the Truth. They are the Righteous who decide the Right. They are the True Patriots who teach what true patriotism is. They are the Saviors of Civilization and will use whatever means desirable to achieve their goals. The Enemy is anyone who obstructs or counters their vision of the True and the Right. They personally identify their success in power and wealth with that of their party or corporation or nation.

3. The Triviality of Evil is carried out by those who enjoy the game. They focus on their ability to make things happen for the Shapers by manipulating the Go-alongers. They are focused on winning whatever game they are called upon to play, knowing how to move the pawns, and even check the kings of the other side. The are comic figures. They are the strategists and the organizers who get a kick out of seeing things happen by their mechanizations which sometimes work, but often fail.

4. The Sincerity of Evil belongs to those who think, who understand consequences even those unintended, who have a sense of ambiguity about the world and its evil, and who could make a difference but choose to go along with the Shapers and Gamers. They think they just use, but are usually used by, the Shapers and Gamers. They are the ones about whom tragedies are written.

The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer is the story of how we got where we are today and especially how George Bush and Barack Obama were faced with and made terrible choices in regards to the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the US role in the world. The characters in this tragicomedy are John Foster Dulles who represents the Purity of Evil in his missionary zeal to make America the Jerusalem on the Hill that defeats all contenders. Allen Dulles represents the Triviality of Evil as the playboy womanizer gamer who loves to develop strategies that sometimes win and often lose, but certainly sets up the US as the mover and shaker of the world. Eisenhower (and Kennedy and Johnson to follow) represent the Sincerity of Evil, the "realists" who reluctantly buy into the world vision of Dulles and their plutocratic friends' (we call them both "neocons" and "neoliberals" today).

Then there are the publishers, the editors, the reporters, the politicians, the bishops, the professors, the managers of companies, labor leaders, the generals, and the rest of us who went along. Back to the Banality of Evil.

Yes, there were courageous theologians and clergy, students, labor leaders, artists who protested the vision and actions of the Dulles brothers and their circle of elite friends. Just as in Nazi Germany, Poland, and France. But hardly enough. And the American Century and American Exceptionalism was born to thrive and fall as is happening as I write.



(To be continued

• what these evils have in common
• how can we confront these evils
• how ethics and politics connect)

Thinking Like a Jesuit

Classmate John Thissen sent an article from America which quotes Pope Francis as saying: "We should care more about Jesus than we do about the Church." He also said "I think like a Jesuit."

My late brother-in-law used to joke with me that he went to a Catholic University (Notre Dame) not a Jesuit one. And indeed I fell right into his humorous stereotype when I told him that I have left Christianity including the RC Church, but I shall always remain a Companion of Jesus.

Indeed I do not want to be known as "Christian" mainly because I do not want to confuse myself with many who do call themselves Christian. And I no longer participate in Roman Catholic ritual or language (hierarchical, sexist, dominating) because frankly I was tired of confronting it as a good reformer should and as do my Catholic friends admirably carrying on the spirit of Vatican II.

But like Pope Francis, I am still "a Jesuit at heart." And I wish him and those in communion with him godspeed.

They say it is the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius that forms Jesuit-think. I also believe that it is the long tradition of liberal education, the attempt to reconcile contemporary thinking (and especially the new science) to traditional beliefs, the focus on poverty and the poor, outreach to other cultures by going in through their ways of seeing the world, and appreciation for diversity in thought and behavior. Nevertheless, the Spiritual Exercises is a good place to start to understand thinking like a Jesuit.

A popular image of the Jesuits is that of great intellectuals. Yet the Spiritual Exercises do not focus on intellectual reasoning but on imagination and feeling. They consist of imagining walking with Jesus in his time, feeling his passion for justice, for the poor, for equity, for the earth and then making a decision regarding your own calling in walking with him in our time.

Ignatius and the early Jesuits did add "thinking with the Church" and "blind obedience" (two phrases I despise) to the Spiritual Exercise for they were in a time of Revolution and counter-revolution with the papacy and the Inquisition. To survive, many of them curried favor with powerful princes of the Catholic world. It is not all a happy history and one most of us like to forget or paper over. It carried on in the Irish Church as well exemplified by James Joyce. See his Jesuits in "Portrait."

But with the triumph of the Enlightenment, the final self-destruction of doctrinaire religions through the European Religious Wars, New World revolutions and the growth of secularism, and in the US Church link to immigrants, labor, and the poor, in France the priest-worker movement, and in the Philippines and Latin America liberation theology and the base community movement, contemporary Jesuits were liberated to be the best they could be. And I am proud to be associated with them as Companions of Jesus as they name themselves.

What attracted many of us young pre-Peace Corps Ghetto Catholics to become Jesuits were not so much the great theologians and philosophers but the Waterfront Priests (John Corridan), Youth Action Priests (Dan Lord), Labor Priests (Ed Boyle), Anti-war Priests (Dan Berrigan), and our young Jesuit scholastics promoting social justice and marching for Civil Rights.

My own developing imagination of Jesus in my ongoing spiritual exercises has been fired by a lot of scholars including the historical criticism of the New Testament and other early accounts of Jesus, the reconstruction of the history of the Church including the Fathers of the Church, the works and actions of other great spiritual leaders, the study of culture and religion in culture, sociology, social psychology, neuroscience, and yes lots of philosophy--which at its best is critical thinking, i.e. questioning, everything. And of course my imagination of Jesus grows as I carry out my own vocation.

I don't like the image of Jesus as the Prophet, the King, the Redeemer, the High Priest, the Savior, or God. And I don't think he thought of himself that way. Though clearly his biographers used those images.

I like the image of Jesus as a sort of an ancient cynic (the "hippies of the time) traveling around with his possessions on his back in tune with the earth and its bounty. I see him as a rebel confronting the patronage system of Rome, a revolutionary identifying with those who are excluded from or dominated by that system, and a prophet challenging the morality and the religious sanctification of that system. I image him as a peacenik who condemns violence even to the point of accepting it on himself, a humanist who sees that everyone is fundamentally worthwhile and blessed, a skeptic questioning all the truths of the mighty, and an organizer who gathers people together to question, confront, challenge, and live with him. I also imagine him as a secular here-and-now person, not a otherworldly wait-for-later person when/if he used the language of freedom, justice, and heaven or kingdom of God.

That's the Jesus I choose to walk with along with my other companions.

Living Past 75

Reading at 76 Dr. Emmanuel's "Why I hope to die at 75" stimulates some reflection.  I was reflecting on old age and life's end anyways. 

• I recently returned from a class reunion in Detroit where we talked about those who are no longer with us and planned our next reunion deciding not to wait the traditional 5 years. 
• A couple of days ago one of those classmates, Bill Dwyer, died at 76 in his sleep without warning of pains or sickness.
• Bernie and I just moved into a continuum of care retirement community where I constantly point out to her: "Wow, look at all these old people!"
• I'm in process of taking a course on Satire in the Enlightenment and just reread Swift's Gulliver's Travels including the visit to Luggnagg where the struldbrugs grow old but never die.
• And last week in Pittsburg we were playing a "wish game" and my 10 year old grandson Remy said that his wish was that I don't grow any older. 

That latter event hit me especially hard because now I knew that he saw me slowing down, not as ready to throw him about and wrestle and play monster games. I saw myself through his eyes and it's bad enough looking in the mirror.

_______

I feel good. I run 20 miles a week, take bike rides, and in my new old folks home intend to do pool laps regularly. (Everybody says that you die very fit here!)

I read lots, fiction and non fiction, belong to a book club, keep up with the news, go to lectures and plays, regularly visit the wonderful museums in DC, and take advantage of other learning experiences.

I volunteer in housing and community development, my lifelong vocation, in one of the DC neighborhoods through our church's affordable housing development organization and serve on a few community boards.

My wife was and my children are very successful in their careers. I have no idea how much money my children make. But it seems to be enough and they seem very happy with what they are doing and our grandchildren are the best. Now with us in this continuum of care retirement community, they won't have to worry about us. (I wish everybody who wanted it could have this opportunity and that we as a people would provide it, say, through Medicare.)

_______

But Dr. Emmanuel, I'm 76 and over your hill. I don't particularly want to die. And I know that is not what you are saying. You are pointing out that I probably have shot my wad and it's time to let go. I agree. But I have different or perhaps added reasons than those you give.

Yes, I don't want my grandchildren to remember me as a bumbling, stumbling old man. But on the other hand I do hope they can see me as a person who knew how to grow old with some grace and gratitude. I watched my father die of Alzheimer's and my mother after a stroke and it was very, very painful. But that was just an episode. It is not at all how I encounter them today in my dreams and memories. In fact my image of them keeps aggrandizing as I get older.

I will not write that great book or found that big organization or save the world as I thought I would. No, I will not achieve Fame and Fortune--at least no more than I already have; and that's not much. But you know what?  I no longer care. I do want to keep trying to make contributions and think I can in much smaller ways than I once fantasized. I am close to coming to terms that I am a speck upon a speck upon a speck upon a speck upon a speck as one astrophysicist has summed it up. But I am still curious and fascinated by all those specks.

At 76 I intend to take no extraordinary means to prolong that speck. If I am diagnosed with cancer, I will not try to cut it out or stop it with chemotherapy or radiation--unless it be to lesson my pain and promote my tranquillity. If I have a massive stroke or heart attack, let me go where it will take me. And so on. And so on.

And though my life is but an instant of an instant of an instant of an instant of an instant, I enjoy in my instant the warmth of the sun and the breeze caressing my body, the touch of my lover, the sound of falling water, the company of good friends. I am in awe of my brothers and sisters who have nurtured their children, built their communities, composed concerts, choreographed dances, meticulously detailed or boldly splashed paint on canvas, constructed theories, exercised leadership, risked failure, and co-created my world. My instant passes into the next. I am grateful for my instant and will continue to be as long as I live. 

__________

And then there is the matter of Swift's struldbrugs, the immortals of Luggnagg. They are not exactly the same that the AI or Singularity people envision as they work towards human immortality through better and better technology. Yet they do present a cautionary tale for the geeks for everlasting life to consider.

Would it not be a horrible place if humans stayed around forever? Would there not be a disincentive for innovation? Look today how hard it is to get past old ways of thinking and behaving. New birth opens to new possibilities. And keeping old people around forever would suppress new birth.

I doubt we would have had the Axial Revolution much less the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution if the old entrenched group had not let go by dying off. The abolition of slavery, the development of republics, the decline of superstition, the liberation of women, the weaving of a safety net of guaranteed income and health and housing, the openness to diverse religions and lifestyles would still be held back if the Tories had their way. 

Even now old white Christian men in the West along with Islamic fundamentalists in the East fight against change which they think is the cause of all the world's ills. When they themselves in their reliance on violence to protect the way things were and maintain their dominating narrow habits of thinking and behaving are the real problem. Yes, that includes me and all of us over-75ers. We must die and make room for innovation.

I would like to think that we still have a contribution to make if perchance we live past 75 and if we so choose. That contribution is to let go, make room, pass on the torch, and help the new generations to do the same.

Decline of the Nation-State

Having recently visited Scotland, we watched the vote for independence from Great Britain with interest. "No" won quite decisively for lots of reasons. Yet the process was instructive for all of us.

I think it portends or even demonstrates a transforming global political order. One in which power will devolve to cities, within ever expanding yet redefining regional connections, where local self-determination and participation is accessible and exercised in ways that persons, families, and neighborhoods can thrive. But perhaps that is just wishful thinking.

Empires have been a historical certainty. Persian, Chinese, Babylonian, Egyptian, Athenian, Roman. Eastern and Western feudalism led to nation states within empires run by a centralized, hierarchically organized ruler. But empires collapsed with the First World War. Sure, we still have areas of influence which came to a head in the Cold War with groupings of national allies. And the US portrays much of the markings and behaviors of an Empire. But not the way of the French Napoleanic empire ruled from Paris. Or the British or Turkish empire. The resurgence of empires in Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or even Stalinist Russia was denied. And now the American Empire, even with its almost-monopoly of the means of violence, is dissolving much to the woes of neo-conservatives, neo-liberals, and nostalgic "patriots."

Now are nation-states going the same way?  Economically, transnational corporations exert the most influence by virtual plutocracies that transcend national boundaries. Civil wars cross national boundaries. The Islamic State is an anachronism in trying to establish an Islamic Caliphate as would be a Christian attempt to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire. It is actually a grouping of "liberation" or "terror" (depending on your perspective) movements in the Middle East. And consider the Kurds, the Basques, the Palestinians, the Bosnians, and others throughout the world where peoples are grouping through culture or economics or politics or all and using the misleading language of "two (or more) civilizations" or "war on (or of) terrorism." Even the US Civil War is not over.

I read Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neocon or neoliberal, because he makes me think.  In his "End of History and the Last Man," he poses that history as Hegel understood it (a dialectic) and its conflicts are surpassed in the triumph of liberal, capitalistic democracy. He was wrong, but really it was Hegel and Marx who were wrong and all those who speculate that we are reaching some pinnacle of history and humanity in western liberal post-capitalist democracy. Fukuyama did indicate in his book the rising wave of tribalism that could keep the conflicts of history going.

His book on "Trust" studied the importance of bridging social capital (Putnam's term) in regions both within and among nations in raising the economic standard of living. And then in his "Origins of Political Order," he works out his Political Development Model of State Building, Rule by Law, and Accountable Government. In all these works, he presents the cognitive tools for our move beyond empire and the nation-state into intra and inter regional thinking.

The striving for justice and peace remains an imperative. It is linked, I think, to our fundamental desire for recognition and respect (as Fukuyama draws from Plato) which is achieved in public space, i.e. politics. That politics is being gobbled up by the forces of private enrichment in which plutocrats and their institutions rule. What form will the restoration of public space with justice and peace take now that empires and nation-states are in decline?

I believe that to be the most important question of our era.

Meta-Physics

The latest SA cover article by Lawrence Krauss "A Beacon from the Big Bang" discusses the discovery of gravitational waves from the inflation of the Universe microseconds after the origin of the universe. This discovery, if confirmed, could launch a new Scientific Revolution that unites quantum and macro physics into the unified "theory of everything" including wild previously undiscovered dimensions in our universe and new, possibly infinite universes distinct from our own.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Krauss: "From the perspective of understanding the very origins of our universe and the vexing problem of why it exists at all, probing inflation by the observation of gravitational waves has the potential of turning what many consider to be one of the grandest metaphysical speculations of all into hard physics." (p.67)

Now that sentence stimulates in me an inquiry into the meaning of "metaphysics" and the role of philosophy vis-a-vis science.

"Metaphysics" (After Physics), which Aristotle called the chapter that came after his chapter called Physics, became pretty wierd in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Physis is the Greek word for nature and meta can be translated as "after," "above," and "beyond." Metaphysics was considered the special knowledge and technique of spiritualists and occultists like Rosacrucians, Christian Scientists, Scientologists, Cabalists, Sufis, Metaphysicians, and even Theologians.

Therefore among rational, secular, and scientific thinkers and skeptics, metaphysics became quite discredited. Philosophers used "ontology" instead of "metaphysics." But that only served to heap discredit on Ontology and Philosophy. I certainly would not want to be accused of being a metaphysician or at all dabbling in metaphysics.

Yet here the word is being used by a very credible astrophysicist.

The word implies something beyond, after, and/or above nature. Yet nature is defined as "all there is" and "all that is subject to scientific inquiry." That seems to exclude "Santa Claus," the "Great Pumpkin," "gods," "angels and devils," "ghosts in machines," "sphinxes," "minotaurs," (who knows about "mermaids" and "unicorns") concepts which are clearly above or beyond the natural order and so not useful to this skeptic except as metaphors for something that can be subject to scientific inquiry or fancies of the imagination fueling artistic endeavors. (Including my new favorite Terry Prachett Diskworld books--but more on his "theology" later.)

There it is: imagination. Einstein says imagination is the main driver of science. What imagination is I'll let the evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists determine. It seems to be the singular, special capacity of human existence linked to consciousness and symbolic behavior. It is our ability to speculate and so try on theories of the origins and workings of nature. It is our ability to project future states and so plan and change the world.

Nature and our knowledge of it are not static but continually transforming. And so there is an after- or beyond-nature which is the Future of nature, continually be-coming partially due to our interaction with it. A becoming for good or for evil as we choose using our insight into nature. Science, art, religion, and good old common sense, all endeavors of the human enterprise, struggle with the origins and ends, the Alpha and the Omega, of and beyond nature including its universes, our world, and our selves. In our imagination, our speculation, and our action, the Alpha and Omega are/is already here and now pushing and pulling us personally and collectively.

And so astrophysicist Krauss can embrace "metaphysical speculation" and attempt to turn it into "hard physics."

Which leads me to consider the role of philosophy in relation to science and other human endeavors. I see it as sort of the before and after of science and other human enterprises.

As I have earlier indicated I distinguish three realms of human enterprise: economy (the realm of life and the desire to survive and thrive), culture (the realm of meaning and the desire to know), and politics (the realm of power and the desire to act/initiate). Incidentally, "love" can be defined in relation to each of these realms and their desires.

Within the cultural realm are many professions and disciplines. Among them are science, art, religion, and philosophy itself. Philosophy is a reflection on these disciplines. It is literary and art criticism. It is interpretation of the sciences and their theories. It is history and explication of religions and their manifestations. It is inquiry into the meaning and role of philosophy and its concepts. In reflecting on the meanings of these disciplines in the past, philosophy is also speculating on the future within the disciplines and among them and in relation to the other two realms of human desire and endeavor, the political and the economic.

Good philosophy does not take the place of or rule over any of these disciplines or human endeavors. It appreciates and spurs them on. It drives us to discover through them the Alpha and Omega of our human existence and its world.  Now that's a metaphysics that I can accept.